You are kidding right? You do know you control what opens what on a Mac?

Sure, but in some cases I forget that a jpg I just created in photoshop will open in preview on double click. Other times I want preview to open the jpg if photoshop is not already running because Preview opens much more quickly and I just want to view it not edit it. That is why I generally ignore setting rules for which app opens which type of document except for pdf which I generally use Acrobat Pro for although on occasion I want to open it in Illustrator. As I mentioned I have gotten in the habit of dragging a document to the dock app icon of my choice to open it. Another example is sometimes I want to open an html file in a browser and other times in a text editor. Another example is a mov just created in FCP will open in final cut however all other movies open in QT X although many times I want to open it in QT Pro since it has more export functions.

Sure, but in some cases I forget that a jpg I just created in photoshop will open in preview on double click. Other times I want preview to open the jpg if photoshop is not already running because Preview opens much more quickly and I just want to view it not edit it. That is why I generally ignore setting rules for which app opens which type of document except for pdf which I generally use Acrobat Pro for although on occasion I want to open it in Illustrator. As I mentioned I have gotten in the habit of dragging a document to the dock app icon of my choice to open it. Another example is sometimes I want to open an html file in a browser and other times in a text editor. Another example is a mov just created in FCP will open in final cut however all other movies open in QT X although many times I want to open it in QT Pro since it has more export functions.

I'm not sure if there is a more intuitive way to deal with this issue outside of what you are doing. I can't see how having anything but one default app to open a file type could work.

Perhaps you could create a daemon that would switch the system's default app for certain extensions when certain apps are open. It would just have to monitor when certain processes are started in stopped which doesn't seem too hard.

Yeah, I should. I would prefer that documents opened in the application that created it like the old days, but that had its issues as well. I've gotten into the habit of dragging the document to the dock icon of the app I want to use so it isn't that big of deal.

Use FinderPop, create aliases of apps in their own folders, e.g. folder called Adobe CS3 and fill it with the app aliases. When you right-click on a file, you don't have to go to the "Open With.." option, simply select the Adobe app you wish to open the file with and ... that's it.

Shall we go all the way and add colour icons to the menu bar so it looks like the windows system try? I guess not considering everyone hates skypes colour menu bar icon.

If you look into usability studies you will find colour is only usefull for 3 to 4 icons that use different primary colours, like Apple's the traffic lights that oddly have been critisised or being "too" colourfull.

Monocrome icons are faster for the eye to process because the brain only has to think about shapes, when you add colour into the mix it is distracting, the brain actually want to select icons by colour because colour differences are rated as more important, that's ok but when you have icons using the same colour it becomes distracting. Imagine the letters on your ios keyboard in colour! If you look at the icons throught OS X you will find a lot of them are blue. If you have ever in a hurry pressed the wrong dock icon you may have selected it because it is the same colour as the one you were supposed to press.

It not just Apple that are taking this approach Goggle and Microsoft are also opting for monocrome icons. For those who want a colourfull OS I recommend XP, Vista, or even older verions of OS X which was heavilly critisised for being too colourfull and cartoon like and how OS9 was much better.

Monocrome icons are faster for the eye to process because the brain only has to think about shapes, when you add colour into the mix it is distracting, the brain actually want to select icons by colour because colour differences are rated as more important, that's ok but when you have icons using the same colour it becomes distracting. Imagine the letters on your ios keyboard in colour! If you look at the icons throught OS X you will find a lot of them are blue. If you have ever in a hurry pressed the wrong dock icon you may have selected it because it is the same colour as the one you were supposed to press.

I seem to recall reading something a couple years back about Apple wanting developers to use blue app icons.

I seem to recall reading something a couple years back about Apple wanting developers to use blue app icons.

If they were all blue that wouldn't not be an issue as the brain would then switch to looking at the shapes. Apple could add colour to the background of the toolbar, they don't have to use grey, but greyscales is less distracting. People don't miss the aqua blue scroll bars for this very reason.

Apple added the graphite option probably because of criticism about the OS looking too colourfull.

Use FinderPop, create aliases of apps in their own folders, e.g. folder called Adobe CS3 and fill it with the app aliases. When you right-click on a file, you don't have to go to the "Open With.." option, simply select the Adobe app you wish to open the file with and ... that's it.

I'm using a MacBook Pro, so I have a trackpad, but I can't imagine anything much simpler than a two fingered tap on a file icon, a quick sideways move through "Open With" and onto a list of possible applications. I guess eliminating the "Open With" bit would save a millisecond?

Between that and setting a default application per file type, I really don't know how much more flexible or fine grained Apple could make it, short of the OS reading your mind and opening each file in the application you were thinking of.

Monocrome icons are faster for the eye to process because the brain only has to think about shapes, when you add colour into the mix it is distracting, the brain actually want to select icons by colour because colour differences are rated as more important, that's ok but when you have icons using the same colour it becomes distracting. Imagine the letters on your ios keyboard in colour! If you look at the icons throught OS X you will find a lot of them are blue. If you have ever in a hurry pressed the wrong dock icon you may have selected it because it is the same colour as the one you were supposed to press.

monochrome icons are faster because the brain only has to think about shape, yet colour differences are rated as more important to the brain? Do you realize you are hardly making any sense? Do you also realize the vast negative response of a huge number of apple's user base for the monochrome os sidebars and icons? Are these people all in denial or have nothing better to do, than post feedback after feedback on how sh*t this new direction is in terms of their everyday usability of the os?

And what's with the keyboard analogy? Of course keyboards are meant to be monochrome since you are aiming for optimal letter reading/spotting via contrast as with books, what that go to do with anything? Keyboards are also meant to be used in blind typing.

What you say about the also hardly makes sense, there's a reason why the icons there are colorful and that is so they can be quickly distinguished from one another of course. And apple has taken criticism for opting for too much of blue in some very core icons such as the finder, mail, safari and itunes, but that's not to say because similarly coloured icons can be confused sometimes that the alternative of no colour at all would be better.....

I seem to recall reading something a couple years back about Apple wanting developers to use blue app icons.

Ugh.

That always mystifies me about the jailbreaking crowd. The ones that don't pirate (and the ones that do pirate) throw these HIDEOUS themes onto their phones?

And when the themes aren't mind-numbingly garish, they're ALWAYS monochrome. Every icon looks exactly like every other icon. What's the point of that?! How are you supposed to find anything?

I mean, look at this. I've changed icons, yeah. I like the ones I've changed better than the stock icons, otherwise I wouldn't have changed them. But they remain visually distinct and I can pick out exactly what I'm after in a fraction of a second.

That always mystifies me about the jailbreaking crowd. The ones that don't pirate (and the ones that do pirate) throw these HIDEOUS themes onto their phones…

And when the themes aren't mind-numbingly garish, they're ALWAYS monochrome. Every icon looks exactly like every other icon. What's the point of that?! How are you supposed to find anything?

I mean, look at this. I've changed icons, yeah. I like the ones I've changed better than the stock icons, otherwise I wouldn't have changed them. But they remain visually distinct and I can pick out exactly what I'm after in a fraction of a second.

What macadam212 states is sound but there is a limit and caveats. Just like serif fonts being widely considered easier to read for body text than san-serif fonts there are other factors to consider. I think it makes sense that Apple is making the Too Bar icons (which are small) monochrome and app icons (which are large, up to 512px) coloured and detailed.

Overall it's more important that the icons, whether multicolored, the same basic color, or monochrome be easily discernible from other icons. on top of that Apple has to consider the needs of the general user over some few that would take advantage of certain features. For example, I used to have only FavIcons in my Bookmark Bar in Firefox. No text, just the icon. These were very tiny and not very detailed so having many colors (along with knowing exactly where I had placed them) made having about 40 in a row an easy way to quickly switch bookmarks. I'd say that was a fringe case and would not expect Apple to do that with Safari as it would be hinder, not help.

I definitely agree with you about the 3rd-party themes. There is no balance, just one extreme to the other.

PS: For my Mac background I've been using a 1px x 1px black BMP as far back as you could alter the desktop background. I use my Desktop as a Springboard for launching files so I want the most contrast as possible and no shifting coloring patterns that could camouflage text of Desktop items. Oddly enough it wasn't until Lion that I could finally do away with 1px x 1px bitmap image in favour of the system settings which not offer the color palette to change to any solid color you wish, not just the 10 options OS X offers. The color palette existed for backgrounds before this but only for the border around an image that didn't take up the whole screen. This always struck me as an odd omission.

monochrome icons are faster because the brain only has to think about shape, yet colour differences are rated as more important to the brain? Do you realize you are hardly making any sense? Do you also realize the vast negative response of a huge number of apple's user base for the monochrome os sidebars and icons? Are these people all in denial or have nothing better to do, than post feedback after feedback on how sh*t this new direction is in terms of their everyday usability of the os?

And what's with the keyboard analogy? Of course keyboards are meant to be monochrome since you are aiming for optimal letter reading/spotting via contrast as with books, what that go to do with anything? Keyboards are also meant to be used in blind typing.

What you say about the also hardly makes sense, there's a reason why the icons there are colorful and that is so they can be quickly distinguished from one another of course. And apple has taken criticism for opting for too much of blue in some very core icons such as the finder, mail, safari and itunes, but that's not to say because similarly coloured icons can be confused sometimes that the alternative of no colour at all would be better.....

You've manged to both miss my point and make my point, the keyboard analogy is the same thinking behind monocrome icons. Let me make my point to you again, colour is only usefull if each icon is a different colour, and for it to be really effective the colours should be primary, to be even more effective the colour should relate to the action i.e red for stop.

I'm not saying people are denial if they miss colour, they probably don't understand the reasoning behind it. I think the problem with the sidebar icons is that they are not dark enough, a bit more contrast would help.

I think you are missing another key element in your argument about app icons, which is size. These icons are ually displayed bigger which helps so you don't need to take out colour here. Also I've already stated the traffic light icons work so I'm not trying to remove all colour from the OS.

I agree 100% with all who have expressed the problems of the forced use of autosave+versions in Preview.

Because of this, I had to install Skim, and I use it as my default viewer in Lion. I prefer Preview, and I miss it, but I just can't use it because of versions+autosave.

Please Apple, make this a preference setting, adjustable by the user. Otherwise, as I said in another thread, I've serious doubts I'll consider upgrading to ML, because I won't pay for an OS in which all the standard bundled tools have autosave+versions as a forced behavior.

Preview is starting to turn into a very nice application. I still dislike that it is the default for many file types which I would rather open in CS applications but at least it is quite functional for people who don't have CS.

You've manged to both miss my point and make my point, the keyboard analogy is the same thinking behind monocrome icons. Let me make my point to you again, colour is only usefull if each icon is a different colour, and for it to be really effective the colours should be primary, to be even more effective the colour should relate to the action i.e red for stop.

I'm not saying people are denial if they miss colour, they probably don't understand the reasoning behind it. I think the problem with the sidebar icons is that they are not dark enough, a bit more contrast would help.

I think you are missing another key element in your argument about app icons, which is size. These icons are ually displayed bigger which helps so you don't need to take out colour here. Also I've already stated the traffic light icons work so I'm not trying to remove all colour from the OS.

Color is only useful if each icon is a different color? And to be really effective they need to be primary colors?

This is just completely ludicrous. Human eyes and brains are quite good at using color to quickly and accurately identify or categorize things. In fact, that is the reason why animals have evolved to poses color vision. The colors need not be primary for us to make use of the color cues. Note that it is easier to find a car in a parking lot if you know its color. This true even though other cars are the same color. The same is true for finding a particular person in a crowd. It is easier if you know what color of shirt they're wearing.

So what is apple up to? Apple is prioritizing style over usability when it comes to some aspects of GUI design. This enrages HCI purists but enthralls fashion conscious users. Is it the right tradeoff? That's up to each person to decide based upon their own needs and preferences.